Dismissing him from her mind then, she took off her gloves, opened her bag, took a letter out of it, and settled back in her corner to read. It interested him to see that the letter was written on cheap note paper in uneducated handwriting, and that the beautiful slim hands now revealed to him were ringless except for a wedding ring. He decided, upon the evidence of her obvious weariness, of the hands (women with much washing up to do seldom bothered with their rings nowadays), and the letter, that she was worn out with chores to which she was unsuited and unused, and was going down into the country to interview some woman who had answered her frantic advertisement for a servant. He decided that in that case she was not a widow, but the wife of some hungry boar of a man who insisted upon a good dinner every day no matter how uncongenial pots and pans might be to his wife. She wore black not as a sign of grief, but because it suited her. He decided that she had at any rate escaped the burden of children, for there was nothing maternal about that exquisite boyish figure.
But here he was wrong, for Nadine Eliot had borne five children, and she was going down into the country to interview not a servant, but a prospective nanny for the twins. If she could get hold of a nanny for the twins, she thought, then she could go on living, but if she couldn’t then her dearest wish would be for extinction. She doubted if she even wanted life after death, not if it meant having baby angels underfoot all day. People whose acquaintance with the twins was not intimate sometimes told her that they were little angels, and upon those occasions she smiled her charming smile but made no verbal reply.
She was not an unloving mother, but she was not naturally a lover of children, and she was so desperately tired. The birth of the twins had been a harrowing experience, and she had never fully recovered from it. She ought not to have had them, of course, for after the birth of her third child the doctor had told her she should not have another. But just before the war she had been reunited with her husband, from whom she had been separated for some time, and then had come the war, and George had fought hard and gallantly before getting the wound which had returned him to England and a safe appointment at the War Office. She had admired and pitied him, and so—well—the twins had come. She could yet make a success of them, she thought, and of her difficult married life, and of her motherhood of her three older children, if she could find a really good nanny. Her whole salvation depended upon a really good nanny. If when one reached exhaustion point one could say to one’s children, “Go to the nursery, darlings,” then one could be a good mother, if not, no. . . . At least she couldn’t.
She looked down at the letter in her hands. Usually one couldn’t tell much about the writer from the letter of a not very well-educated woman; they all seemed to have the same handwriting and to express themselves in the same stilted sort of way. But this letter was different. One could tell quite a lot about the writer from it. She read it again.
Dear Madam,
I saw your advertisement for a nurse for your children. Before the war, when your three elder children lived at Damerosehay, I was nursemaid to them. You may not remember me, for you did not come to Damerosehay often. I was Jill Baker, and I married Alf Watson, who helped in the garden at Damerosehay. He was killed at Dunkirk. I have no children. I have been working in day nurseries for children, having none of my own, but now I am living with my Auntie Rose at the Herb of Grace, the old inn at the Hard. I have not seen your twins, Madam, but if they are anything like Master Ben and Master Tommy and Miss Caroline in the old days I shall love them.
Yours faithfully,
Jill Watson
It was both a revealing and a rather startling letter. To begin with, Jill did not even mention the matter of wages, and such an omission at this moment of national history, when noble behavior sustained through a long war had caused a violent swing of the pendulum and returned everybody to the acquisitive manners of the jungle, was enough to take one’s breath away. Then the patient understatement in the two sentences, “He was killed at Dunkirk. I have no children,” was oddly touching. And then there was the obvious love of children. (Imagine any woman, thought Nadine, choosing to work in a day nursery.) Unworldly, patient, loving—could one ask for finer qualities in a nanny? There was, of course, the hint of disapproval contained in the sentence, “. . . you did not come to Damerosehay often.” But then a nanny was always disapproving of the mother. You couldn’t have a nanny and not be disapproved of. And she was, after all, used to being disapproved of, just as she was used to being the center of interest.
It was true that in the days when she had been separated from George, and the children had lived with his mother at Damerosehay, she had not gone there very often, but she did vaguely remember Jill, a thin, pasty-faced little creature, hardly more than a child, whom the wicked Tommy had teased unmercifully. Yet she had apparently forgiven Tommy, and would doubtless forgive Jeremy, the elder of the twins, if he did the same. As he undoubtedly would, for Jerry was very like Tommy. . . . Only worse. . . . Josephine, the younger twin, was not so wicked, but the fertility of her imagination was a thing to make one tremble.
Jill’s letter had only arrived two days ago, and Nadine had not wasted time. The Hard, as far as she remembered, was not very far from Damerosehay, so she had rung up her mother-in-law and asked for a bed for three nights. Lucilla Eliot’s instant eager request that George and the children should come too she had refused with the information that George could not leave the War Office. . . . She simply must have a rest from George and the children. . . . She had written to Jill and said that she would come and see her at the Herb of Grace. Then she had summoned a long-suffering elderly cousin to look after her husband and children in her absence, shut the door of her elegant, but servantless, Chelsea house behind her, and caught the train for Hampshire.
For three whole nights and two whole days she would be free of domesticity. For three whole nights and two whole days she would be at Damerosehay, and what that meant only an Eliot could fully understand. To an Eliot, even for an Eliot who was only one by marriage, Damerosehay was not only the home of Lucilla Eliot, Grandmother, their best-beloved, it was the shrine of their particular tradition. The family, regarded as a unity, had its roots in the place and drew its life from it.
Nadine put the letter down on her lap for a moment and the draft from the window blew it to the floor. John Adair stooped politely and picked it up, and the words at the top caught his eye . . . Herb of Grace. . . . Carefully he memorized the unusual address, then handed the letter to the woman opposite, who put it back in her bag, snapped it shut, and drew on her gloves again, for they were approaching the station where she must get out. Then with a small tired sigh she gazed up at the dressing case on the rack above her head. It was a beautiful one, but abominably heavy. It had been given her in the days of lady’s maids and a plethora of porters. But the sigh had the effect she intended. “Allow me,” said the man opposite, and lifted it down for her.
“Oh, thank you!” she cried, with a delightful surprise that did not in the least deceive him.
“Got anything anywhere else?” he inquired. He knew she hadn’t, but he wanted to hear her speak again, for she had a beautiful voice and her smile was enchanting.
“Nothing else, thank you.”
“Lovely day.”
“Lovely.”
And now she too looked at him with real attention. For his voice also was arresting. “Nice old thing,” she had thought before, when he had got in at Winchester. But now she saw that she had been deceived by the baldness of his head and by his tawny, graying beard, for he was not old. Only sixtyish. He had a good figure, tall, strong, and upright. His face looked as though the features had been shaken up and then assembled anyhow. The large mouth was crooked, the nose had apparently been broken in the shaking process, one of his inquiring bushy eyebrows mounted higher in inquiry than the other. Yet it was an attractive face, redeemed from ugliness by the humor and expressiveness of the mouth,
the breadth of the forehead, the kindliness and penetration of the tawny lion’s eyes. His shabby, loose-fitting tweeds had been expensive, and he wore them with a careless grace that was almost regal. Sixtyish though he might be, he was still exceedingly attractive and immensely vigorous.
Tired to death as she was, Nadine was seized with a sudden ridiculous desire not to get out at her station at all, but to cast herself upon his chest and ask him to take her wherever it was that he was going. . . . For she had a feeling that he was going to an exceedingly expensive hotel somewhere, the sort of hotel where you lie in a deck chair in the sun and do nothing at all, and where delicious food is set before you without any volition of your own, where the bath water is always piping hot (again without any volition of your own), and you are called in the morning with a cup of tea. . . . Only of course such hotels did not exist these days. . . . The sight of this man, so obviously not of this present age, had taken her back to the age where he belonged, the pre-Hitler age. “Grandmother would like him,” she thought. “He’s a gentleman.”
“Good-by,” he said, opening the carriage door for her.
“Good-by,” she answered, and suppressing the desire to fall on his chest, she stepped out of the carriage and moved gracefully down the platform to where her brother-in-law Hilary was blinking shortsightedly through his spectacles at every part of the train except the right one.
— 2 —
“I’m here, Hilary,” she said.
He swung round, smiled at her, took her case in his left hand, and seized her right hand in a grasp that made her wince. Yet she returned the grip and gave him the very sweetest smile she could possibly conjure up. Nadine and Hilary had little in common, and they were, in addition, slightly scared of each other. Hilary, a bachelor country parson, was not lacking in that courage which distinguished all the Eliots, but he was definitely scared of three things: women of Nadine’s type, whom he described to himself as “women of the world,” the percolation of luxury into his personal life, and pride. Nadine shied like a startled thoroughbred from that something in Hilary, she did not quite know what, which seemed always to challenge her to some action that she did not want to take.
“It’s sweet of you to meet me, Hilary,” she said.
“I had to,” said Hilary, with his usual devastating truthfulness. “The village taxi has broken down again and mine was the only car available.”
“I am afraid I am a great nuisance, taking up your time like this,” murmured Nadine, as they left the station and approached the battered old Ford.
“Not at all,” said Hilary cheerfully, “I had to come in to the bank anyhow. Get in, will you? The self-starter is out of order. I’ll have to wind her up. How’s George?”
“Not too bad,” said Nadine. “He’s never been the same since that lung wound, you know. He’s wretched always with this miserable asthma.”
“Ought to live in the country,” said Hilary, levering the handle.
“He has this War Office appointment,” said Nadine, mentally thanking God for it. . . . How she would hate to live permanently in the country.
“Ought to leave the army now,” said Hilary. “He’s getting on. We’re all getting on. Especially my old Ford. There! She’s off!”
The Ford coughed twice, bounced spasmodically, and stopped again just as Hilary settled himself in the driver’s seat. He gave no exclamation of impatience. He just smiled, got out, and wound her up again. At the third trial they really were off.
“Wonderful old car,” said Hilary with deep affection. “Thirteen years old and still serviceable. Don’t know what I’d do if I hadn’t got her. Mine’s a scattered parish, you know. I’d never get through all the visiting without her.”
Hilary had been badly wounded and gassed as a chaplain in the First World War, and had permanently impaired health and a permanently lamed and painful leg. Because of this he had been appointed to a small country parish, and had now been vicar of Fairhaven for twenty-seven years. He was sixty-six years old, the eldest of Lucilla Eliot’s five children, and so the nominal head of the Eliot family. But only nominal. It was Lucilla who ruled. In looks all the Eliots were either very beautiful or very plain, according as they took after Grandmother or Grandfather Eliot. There were no half measures. They were either one thing or the other. Hilary was the other. He was bald and stout and looked already an old man. Yet he had the Eliot charm, inherited from Lucilla: a complete lack of affectation, a simplicity that was wholly disarming and yet a little misleading, because it was combined with considerable astuteness. . . . Nadine was always uncomfortably aware that Hilary’s kind brown eyes saw a very great deal more than most people realized. . . . And he had, too, a charm that was all his own, an indefinable air of aristocracy that was the outcome of his own secret spiritual victories. In Hilary that something in a man that is independent of inheritance, training, or tradition, though it has its roots in them like a plant in the soil, had grown to unusual height and strength. People did not take much notice of Hilary when they first met him, but they found that he grew upon them.
Fairhaven had no station, and being of a conservative turn of mind hoped it never would; it also had very few shops. Visitors had to be met, and anything very ambitious in the way of a purchase had to be made at Radford, down whose main street Hilary’s Ford was now chugging. It was a second-rate modern seacoast town, of which Fairhaven, boasting ancient history, always expected the worst.
“They’re putting up a holiday camp here now,” said Hilary.
“One would expect that,” said Nadine.
But they both spoke placidly, for four good lengthy English miles divided Radford from Fairhaven, and the one and only good thing to be said about this lean postwar period was that its shortages put a brake upon so-called progress. It would be a very long time before the vulgarity of Radford engulfed Fairhaven.
Fairhaven consisted of two hamlets, Big Village and Little Village. Big Village, a few miles inland, had one of the loveliest and most ancient churches in all Hampshire, and its cob cottages, with their thatched roofs and whitewashed walls, squatted round it like white chickens round a gray old hen. The whole place, deeply embedded in orchards and gardens and haystacks, and cupped in a small sheltered green valley, was now so much a part of its native earth that it seemed a thing not built upon that earth but grown out of it, as Little Village had grown out of the mysterious sea marshes that linked the peaceful beauty of the green inland pastures to the terror of the sea. Little Village, consisting of the old house of Damerosehay sheltering behind its wind-twisted oak wood, the Shop and the Coastguard Station, the Eel and Lobster, a few fishermen’s cottages and the Harbor, boasted no white and gold gleaming in the sun. Its fuchsias and tamarisk trees clustered about solid walls of gray stone, and the shadows of the wheeling gulls touched with dim blue the roofs of slate that were the color of a sunless sea. Little Village had elbowed its way through the exquisite shifting colors of the marshes with the knowledge that they could at any time be swept away like a rainbow by the incoming storm of the sea, and had armored itself accordingly like some crustacean of the deep.
It was a matter of temperament which of the two hamlets one considered the most beautiful. Adventurous hearts preferred Little Village, and of these was Nadine. She was a little surprised at her own preference, for she was no country lover, and Big Village possessed more of the amenities of civilization than Little Village. But there was something about Little Village and the marshes that allied itself with what was best in one and resolved confusions. She seldom paid a visit to Damerosehay without going away again strengthened and subtly changed. As they chugged along the main road she watched eagerly for the narrow rutted lane that led down to the marshes and gave one one’s first breath of the sea.
“How’s Grandmother?” she asked.
“Eighty-six years old,” said Hilary.
“Not failing?” she asked anxiously. Grandmo
ther was to the Eliot family what the hub of a wheel is to the spokes. She kept them together. She was the heart of Damerosehay. In a sense she was Damerosehay. None of her children or grandchildren dared to think of what life would be without her.
“Not in herself,” said Hilary cheerfully. “Mentally and spiritually she’s as alert as ever she was. We’re all tied to her apron strings more firmly than ever, I think. But physically she’s very tired. And she misses Ellen.”
Ellen, Grandmother’s maid, who had been with her since her marriage, had died suddenly just before the war.
“Poor Grandmother,” said Nadine. “Losing Ellen must have been like losing an arm or a leg.”
“Worse,” said Hilary briefly.
The car swung to the right into the rutted lane and the cool tang of the sea came to meet them. They were silent while Nadine watched for what to returning Eliots was the first sight of home, the two cornfields that marked the place where the lane swung east towards Little Village; the cultivated one upon the landward side of the lane, and the wild one that had sprung up year by year ever since a grain ship had been wrecked there in the marsh, which bore thereafter a strange stunted harvest that could not be reaped, but only reverenced for the mystery of its renewal. The real cornfield was being harrowed, and Hilary drove slowly that Nadine might feast her eyes upon the sight of the two old horses passing back and forth with a cloud of gleaming gulls following after.
“Lovely,” murmured Nadine.
“One of the best sights in the world,” said Hilary. “Remember how the children used to hang over the gate to watch?”